


Lady of His Dreams

by Jadealiya



Series: Link + Zelda 30kisses Challenge [16]
Category: Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, The Legend of Zelda
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 11:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadealiya/pseuds/Jadealiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post "Link's Awakening."  Again set adrift, Link attempts to find meaning in his dreams. Written for the 30kisses challenge - Theme #20 "The road home."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady of His Dreams

This time, there hadn’t been a pretty face waiting for Link when he woke up. Not even the stars greeted him, shrouded as they were by storm cloud funeral veils, masking the lights’ weeping that fell in freezing sheets on the castaway’s exposed skin.

They should weep, Link reflected as he struggled to sit up. Everything and everyone should be weeping. Marin, her father, all the people of the island were gone. Because of him.

Pulling his knees to his chest, Link shivered and wept, ignoring the playful waves that still lapped at his feet. His mind jumped through the events on the island…the village, the instruments, the people and animals and mermaid, the egg, the Windfish, Marin...

Marin.

They had first met on a beach, much like this one. After the terror of the storm, the panic of capsizing, Link had reevaluated his decision that the ocean hated him when he saw her sparkling eyes, scrunched up in concern watching him wake. She was so gentle, so beautiful, so much like the Princess he had left in her castle back in Hyrule! But without the title and obligations and...

...and she was a dream. Not real. Nothing on the island had been real.

Shivering in a way that had nothing to do with the slacking rain, Link considered his last encounter with the Windfish. During the destruction of his boat out at sea, Link had been drawn into the dream of the ancient creature and had been given the quest of freeing himself and the massive fish from that illusionary world. All of the people had been a byproduct of the dream of the Windfish and his own subconscious.

And Link had dreamed of his Princess, free from her responsibilities. He had kissed her too, Link recalled, blushing hotly. Even after the mess with Aghanim, Link never would have dared kissing Zelda. But her island incarnation? The Zelda of his dreams? That had been perfectly natural.

Slowly, Link stood, eyes as dry as possibly in the rain and salt spray of the coast. In its way, his dream had shown him what he really wanted. Fear of her rank aside, he loved Zelda. The slightest of smiles graced Link’s face as he imagined barging into Zelda’s throne room, the long-lost hero and waterlogged traveler, ignoring all protocol, sweeping the Princess off her feet and into his arms and kissing her with a passion that would put even his dreams to shame.

But that would involve getting back to Hyrule. Frowning, Link looked at the still agitated sea. The storm. The shipwreck. The helpless feeling of being tossed about like a broken toy. Link forced those images away, ignoring the steadily rising terror they inspired. He would find his way home, back to Zelda, back to the woman he loved...

Darkness and fury in the form of a rising wave backhanded Link and sent him reeling, reminding him of the unadulterated power found in the ocean and the destined fate of those who escape death at sea through giant illusionary fish-shaped loopholes.

Cowering well away from the tide-line, coughing up salt water and again shaking, Link made a silent promise to himself and the lady of his dreams. Home. He would return home. As soon as he found a path back that did not involve the sea.

He would cling to that promise and his memories until he died, having long ago learned that a land route back to Hyrule was as substantial as his dreams.


End file.
